


Cut it Out

by onetiredboy



Series: Jay's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Cosplay, Episode: s01e16-17 Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, I just love him, Teen Peter, Trans Peter Nureyev, teen peter is my favourite thing to write i think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23490673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetiredboy/pseuds/onetiredboy
Summary: A story about Peter Nureyev and his hair.
Relationships: Mag & Peter Nureyev
Series: Jay's Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690075
Comments: 15
Kudos: 124





	Cut it Out

**Author's Note:**

> Just a disclaimer, there is some very brief & immediately corrected misgendering at one point in this fic. To skip it, skip the line in italics.
> 
> UM!!!!! floyd (@arsonadvocate on twitter) did some INCREDIBLE cosplay inspired by this fic!!!!!!!! i'm more bowled over than nureyevs hair!!!!! endless thanks!

“Please.”

Silence for a moment. The sound of crinkling paper as a page of the Ekahamsa neighbourhood’s daily publication is turned. The creaking of an old wooden chair. The silence otherwise is so absolute, the falling dust particles frozen in the beams of light let in by the holes in the walls and ceiling are nearly deafening.

Without looking up from his paper, Mag Ransom says, “Please, what?”

“Ma- _ag,”_ says Peter Nureyev, all of fourteen years old, though his height has him commonly mistaken for much older, “You _know_ what.”

Mag sighs and turns another page. Peter tries different angles around the table to see which will have Mag unable to avoid looking at him. But Mag is a master at avoiding everything – police, taxes, _eye-contact…_

“I know,” Mag says, hardly louder than a mumble, as if he was reading a particularly interesting article out loud to himself, “That _somebody_ left me a bunch of cut out pictures of models with long hair beside my bed this morning.”

Peter grips the edge of the table, “ _And?”_

“And I think we’d better start scoping out for a new hideout, Pete,” Mag says, and _finally_ lowers his newspaper. Peter’s heart sinks immediately – he’s got that amused look in his eye that means Peter’s already lost the argument they haven’t had yet, and Mag continues, “Because I certainly know my Peter Nureyev didn’t put them there.”

“Mag—”

“But! You did remind me it’s time for your monthly haircut, boy,” Mag says cheerily, and pushes back the old wooden chair to stand up.

Peter groans, tipping his head back until it hurts his throat, “Just one month. Just let me go _one_ month without a haircut, Mag, nobody will even notice.”

“If nobody will notice either way, why not do it now?” Mag shakes his head as he walks towards the cupboard where all the sharp things are kept, “I thought I taught you better persuasion skills than that.”

“Please let me grow my hair out,” Peter says every word deliberately, and then he sighs theatrically, “I’m sick and tired of this same bowl cut, Mag! It’s ugly, and might I remind you that it was you that said the first rule of thieving was for a thief to look presentable!”

“Presentable, yes,” Mag opens the cupboard and pulls out a pair of scissors. Peter tries to mentally calculate the odds of him being able to stay away from home for a month without one of Mag’s eyes on the street spotting him. Mag turns around, “But unique, Pete? That’s the worst thing a thief can be.”

“Long hair isn’t even unique!”

“On Brahma, it is,” Mag’s voice has a note of finality in it now, “Peter Nureyev. Almost every young boy your age has this very same haircut. How you are supposed to live a life as a thief if you can’t even imagine getting over your vanity enough to blend into a crowd is beyond me.”

Peter bites the inside of his cheek and glares viciously.

“Honestly, Pete. Next you’ll be cutting out pictures of those celebrities with sharp teeth and putting those beside my bed. Say I let you do that, Pete, then what would you be? Easy to pick out in a line-up is what.”

“I wouldn’t,” Peter spits out, “ _That_ kind of thing is irreversible. I’m smarter than that, Mag.”

“Prove it to me,” Mag says, grabbing a chair from the table and setting it down in front of him firmly, “And come get your hair cut.”

For a moment they both stand, glaring each other down. Peter weighs his options – run and Mag may easily catch him; make it to the door and one of his spies will find him within a week, if the police or the need for food don’t get to him first.

He knows it’s a battle lost. But he glares for a moment longer anyway, looking straight at him with arms folded, just to show that he can. Mag’s not his father, after all.

 _I bet my_ Dad _would let me grow out my hair,_ comes a voice from inside him, bubbling and angry. It’s that that shakes him out of it at last. He knows Mag has given him a lot. He’s sure his father would want him to behave, after everything Mag has done.

Peter rolls his eyes, and drags himself over to the chair.

“See, Pete? I knew you were a smart boy,” Mag says.

Peter says nothing. He slumps as much as he can and glares at the wall as Mag gets to work.

“I tell you what, Pete, you wouldn’t like long hair anyway,” Mag soothes, “It’d get in the way too much.”

“I could just put it up,” Peter mutters under his breath.

Mag sighs, and pats the top of his head, “I tell you what, boy. Let’s wait until you’re sixteen, eh? You still want your hair long then, and you have all my permission.”

It’s a strategy that works on most kids. Give them an opportunity to feel like their desires will be granted later on, but far enough away that by the time they get there, they will have forgotten about them.

Peter sits up straighter in his chair, a smile curling onto his face, “You promise, Mag?”

“I promise,” Mag says, hearty and confident. It’s too bad Mag’s completely forgotten something vital.

Peter Nureyev is not ‘most kids’.

* * *

To say Peter has a _birthday_ is not exactly correct. It’s more an anniversary. Mag estimates Pete was eight when he found him, slipping through a crowd as another Brahmese street urchin, plucking his lunch from a bakery with lithe fingers.

Peter doesn’t remember much about his father. He does remember the first time he felt Mag’s hand on his shoulder, how he felt, paralysed with fear and stuck between a furious bakery owner and a tall broad stranger with creds that had appeared out of a passing woman’s pocket.

_“Terribly sorry. My daughter has an awful habit. I’ll pay, and here, take a tip.”_

Peter had wrenched himself out of Mag’s hands the second they got far away enough from the baker to be out of eyesight, all too aware of what tall broad strangers were capable of.

But Mag had had no sketchy job to offer, no gang of child-slaves he expected Peter to become a part of. What he had, instead, was first, an apology ( _I did say daughter, didn’t I? My mistake)_ and a story. One that started with, ‘You know, now that you’ve said that, I’ve realised you remind me of someone. Did you know your father, boy?’

Peter doesn’t know when he was born. But he knows when his sense of having a _life_ outside of survival began. And so, for all intents and purposes, today is his sixteenth birthday.

They’re in a different house on the other side of Sarasvati, which is as close to a capital as a struggling Outer Rim planet gets to have. For a long time, Peter’s training took place in outer suburbs where there were more streets than bored police, but as he grew older and his skills sharpened, Mag’s safehouses began to draw closer and closer in to the centre of action.

The centre of Brahma, a shadowed city underneath the hulk of New Kinshasa, where wet-eyed children take cover from invisible tyrants and the smell of laser smoke rises from piles of rubble laid like abstract sculptures between inconspicuous-looking homeless shelters, is a place Peter feels he’s been pulled to all his life. This, their settling-down so close to its outskirts, is nothing but a clear message to him: his training is almost complete. He is almost his own man, willing and able to make decisions of his own and take control of his own life.

And that starts with the first words that fall out of his mouth when he slams his bedroom door open.

“I want to grow my hair out.”

“—Birthday…” Mag continues saying, his voice immediately duller, and then he sighs, heavily. The cake he bought (but with stolen money, so it barely counts) slides in the shitty plastic packaging it came in with the slump of his shoulders. It says ‘Happy Birthday Pete’.

Peter looks down his nose at it, and then back up at Mag, “Well, old man?”

“Well,” Mag says, “I regret bringing up such a spoiled smartass.”

Peter Nureyev grins.

* * *

Peter wakes up the very day after his first missed haircut and checks his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror of their safehouse.

“Any difference, Pete?” Mag’s voice is warm and amused, and Peter leans his head out the bathroom and glares at him.

It takes _forever_ before there is any noticeable difference. Three months and another home later, Peter Nureyev sits in front of a wall-to-floor mirror and puts little braids into his hair.

A knock at the door, “Are you done with staring at yourself in the mirror, Pete?” Mag calls.

“No,” Peter answers matter-of-factly.

Mag sighs, “What kind of a thief are you going to be if you can’t show up to training on time because of vanity, Pete?”

 _The best one,_ Peter thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He just starts to take out the braids in his hair so that he can leave and Mag can stop complaining.

It’s another four months before Peter can make a proper ponytail. Things have changed.

Their hideout, one of three that they circle through on an irregular schedule, is in the centre of Sarasvati, and a plan is beginning to form. There are several stages to this plan, and Peter knows them all back to front and upside down.

He’s particularly interested in the part where they get him fit for a suit, finally get him glasses that are precise and look good on his face. Peter pulls his hair-tie out in the dressing room and watches the way his hair falls around his shoulders.

He’s beautiful, he thinks. He watches himself smile, and starts to think if maybe sharp teeth wouldn’t suit him, after all.

“That suit looks good on you, Pete,” Mag says as they walk out of the doors. “That boy at the checkout couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.”

“Really?” Peter turns around to peer back into the shop through the glass doors, realises he can’t be caught staring, and turns back around again. “Should I go in and say something?” he whispers to Mag.

“We don’t have time for distractions, Peter,” Mag says, though his voice is amused.

“It wouldn’t hurt to have a chat,” Peter pushes, “Come on Mag, it’s you who says you’re worried I don’t socialise enough with kids my age.”

“That was before we were six months away from completing the biggest job in Brahma’s history, Pete. We have to keep a low profile from here on out. Besides, what would you even say?”

“Well, I…” Peter starts, “I could… well. Get his number, I suppose.”

“On your burner comms?”

“Well—” Peter stops and sighs. He glares up at Mag, “Alright, Mag. You’ve made your point.” He kicks at some gravel with his shoe.

“Don’t scuff your shoes, Pete,” Mag scolds, “Honestly. You didn’t act this way when I told you about that girl who couldn’t stop flirting with you at the café we scoped out.”

“Yes, well, that’s… different,” Peter mumbles. He allows one wayward glance over his shoulder back towards the door, before giving up and letting Mag lead him along.

“Come on, Pete,” Mag claps his hand on Peter’s shoulder, “There’ll be plenty of time for boys after all of this is over.”

The thought unsettles Peter, suddenly. It’s the first time Mag has mentioned life _after_. He’s spent so much of his life leading up to this job that the idea of an _after_ seems… well, impossible. What will happen to Peter and Mag once the revolution is over?

“Mag,” Peter says quietly.

“Hm? What is it?”

“You won’t… I mean,” Peter swallows down the anxiety in his throat, “You won’t leave me after all this is over, will you?”

“And abandon my boy?” Mag scoffs, and shakes Peter lightly by the hand on his shoulder, “You’re ridiculous, Pete! There’s so much more about life I have to show you. So much more dating advice to give!”

A smile works its way onto Peter’s face, and he pushes Mags hand off of him, “I don’t want your _dating advice_ , old man.”

“But you believe me, don’t you, Peter?” Mag’s bushy eyebrows frown in concern, “You know I’d never just cast you aside like some worthless thief, eh?”

“Yeah,” Peter says, “I know, Mag.”

But there’s a twist in his gut all the same.

* * *

The day of the big job, Peter puts his hair into a plait.

By now, at seventeen and four months, his hair has grown an impressive length. The end of the plait hangs just underneath his shoulder blades. He keeps two small sections of hair out of the plait to hang either side of his face, dangling to his collarbone. He thinks the look compliments his dark eyes and the shape of his jaw.

Mag agrees, “I like what you’ve done with the hair, Pete!” he says. He’s in a matching suit, clean and white. Seeing the fake documents in his hand makes Peter’s heart flutter against his ribcage.

“Thank you, Mag,” Peter says, as eloquently as he can. He has to get into character, and he’s been practising perfecting his speech all morning. _Peter Ransom, dignitary from Akna._

“I mean it,” Mag continues. There’s a twinkle in his eye that has a groan building in Peter’s throat, and then Mag says it: “I didn’t like it at first, but it’s really _grown on you_!”

Peter lets his groan out, tipping his head back. Then he glares at Mag, “Glad to see you’re taking all of this seriously.”

“Of course I am! I’m getting in to character. Nobody’s going to believe we’re father and son unless I use all my very best jokes.”

“Charming,” Peter mutters, and straightens his cuffs. Then he pulls his plait over his shoulder. Idiotic jokes and heist-related adrenaline aside, there’s a part of him that glows with the knowledge that Mag approves of his long hair.

“Are you ready to go, Pete?” Mag asks, shaking Peter out of his reverie.

Here it is, then. Everything the two words ‘Peter Nureyev’ have ever symbolised boiled down into one moment. This next twenty-four hours defines his whole life, every second he’s worked and every mark he’s thieved and every late night he’s pulled, with Mag by his side to guide him.

“I’m ready, Mag,” Peter says.

* * *

The first thing that has to go is the hair.

Peter walks through a pharmacy in the Brahmese spaceport in clothes he stole from a shelf two stores over. They fit wrong. They don’t do much to hide the way his knees won’t stop _shaking_.

He estimates he has ten minutes before there’s a warrant for his arrest, and getting out is going to be much harder once the spaceport is on the lookout.

His treacherous, trembling fingers almost drop the pair of scissors when he slides them from the shelf in the first aid section into his pocket. He grabs what makeup he can, and hovers by the door until he sees someone else getting ready to leave.

Peter bumps past, and slips a random stolen item into the stranger’s pocket. When the alarms go off and security swarms around the bewildered stranger, Peter slips out of the store unnoticed.

Then he’s in a bathroom, the stall door locked and his feet drawn up onto the seat. One hand reaches behind his head and grips the plait that just today Mag had said—

His chest feels like it is crumbling in onto itself, and his hands shake so hard he can’t line up the blade of the scissors to his hair. He closes his eyes, gasps for air. The pit of grief that has opened deep within him, growing and spreading with each passing moment, is so whole and aching that Peter knows if he gives into it, there will be no coming back out. His only choice is to fold it away.

 _I’ll deal with that later,_ Peter tells himself, as he gets his tremors under control enough to put the blade close to his scalp again, _I’ll deal with that later. Deal with that later._

The hair makes a crunching sound when the blade begins to cut through it. These stupid scissors are too blunt. A gasping sob leaves him, and he squeezes his eyes shut so tight it hurts and pushes harder.

When the blade comes through the other side, Peter clutches the plait in one hand, wipes his tears away with the other, and forces himself to breathe until he has pushed everything that hurts deep under the metaphorical rug and it is _gone._

Peter scours the stall for any stray hairs, and then wraps the plait into a plastic bag. His pockets will be checked at the flight gate, but there’s no incinerator at this spaceport and Peter can’t leave _any_ risk of a DNA sample being found. So he stuffs the bag into his pants and prays the next trip out of here is to somewhere not so far away.

In the bathroom mirror, Peter removes his face and applies a new one, using makeup to manipulate his features to match those of the man on his interplanetary passport. He created the image on his comms, a trick M—

A trick somebody taught him once. Or perhaps he found it out on his own. He’s sure he can’t remember, now. He’s never had a father to teach him such things, after all.

Peter pops the cap back on to his lipstick and admires his face in the mirror.

Short hair, he thinks, has always suited him. He can’t imagine having it any other way. 

**Author's Note:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt #1: Traumatic Haircut. Hope you enjoyed! If you came from twitter, consider retweeting it if you liked it. If you didn't, consider yelling at me on twitter! @onetiredb0y.


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